Roflnon How To Improve Your Innovation Success Rates November 16, New York City Reserve your seat at our conference for busi ness leaders. Last year BusinessWeek named these "Magnificent 7 Innovation Transformers". On November 16 they'll share their proven metrics and methods to improve innovation success rates: þ YVES BEHAR Founde fuseproject BETH COMSTOCK President, NBC Universal Digital Media and Market Development LARRY KEELEY President, Doblin Group ROGER MARTIN, Dean, Rotman School JENEANNE RAE Executive Vice-President, Peer Insight DAVID ROCKWELL CEO, Rockwell Group SOHRAB VOSSOUGHI President, ZIBA Design Conference Moderator: BRUCE NUSSBAUM Assistant Managing Edito Business Week Hotelier's Welcome: ROSS KLEIN President, W Hotels www.rotman.utoronto.ca/events Joseph L. Rotman School of Management University of Toronto 16 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 16, 2006 THE MAIL BEING BOB Louis Menand concludes that "there is nothing Dylan likes less than being mistaken for 'Bob Dylan''' (Books, Sep- tember 4th). Yet all the evidence is to the contrary-the romanticized bio- graphical facts issued as a young man, the notoriously Delphic quality of his interview responses that depict a stranger separated from society, the publication of memoirs most notable for their de- piction of a weirdly skewed, if bedaz- zling, universe. The reason that Dylan wouldn't call his music "folk songs" is not, one suspects, the eclecticism of mu- sical artistry, as explained by the sainted Dave Van Ronk, but, rather, the refusal to apply any label to his work other than the nom de plume that he has so elabo- ratelyevolved. Although Menand notes the tradition of invented personas in folk music, he stops short of the most obvious conclusion: that the greatest ar- tistic creation of a man named Robert Zimmerman is the personality known to us as Bob Dylan. Jonathan Sallet Centreville, Md. Menand suggests that the record pro- ducer John Hammond's fierce devo- tion to African-American roots music led him to consider Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, and Duke Ellington "inauthentic." In fact, Hammond's prob- lem with Armstrong was that he traded ensemble playing for soloing instead of finding inspiration among fellow- musicians (in groups like the Hot Fives and Hot Sevens, whose record- ings contain his most fervent playing). Hammond famously preferred dance bands to symphonic jazz orchestras, and he did fault Ellington for pursuing sophistication at the expense of feel- ing. In oddly opposed ways, both men sought to promote racial equality. El- lington did not support Hammond's early call for bands to be racially in te- grated, as that would entail, Ellington felt, losing players from black bands that were already struggling to survive. Hammond was sympathetic, but con- tinued to push for mixed bands, insist- ing that the color line made no more sense in jazz than it did in society. Mark Pruett Eugene, Ore. WANNA BET? James Surowiecki, in his column on sports betting, writes, "How much difference is there, after all, between betting on the future price of wheat . . . and betting on the performance of a baseball team?" (The Financial Page, September 25th). Futures markets in products such as wheat allow farmers and other producers to shield them- selves from some financial risks, and thereby encourage the production of ne- cessities. In this sense, the futures mar- kets are more akin to homeowners' in- surance or liability insurance than to gambling on sports. But there is no cor- responding economic benefit to betting on sports; on the contrary, there are se- rious costs involved in protecting the sports activities from fixing and other corruptions that invariably accompany such gambling activity. Douglas S. Robertson Longmont, Colo. LEARNING TO EAT WELL Burkhard Bilger suggests, in his article on school-lunch reform, that solving the problem depends, in part, on finding the money to create a system like that in France or Italy ("The Lunchroom Re- bellion," September 4th). But the French and Italian systems work not just because they are well funded but also because they exist within a broader food culture in which dishes like braised salmon with lentils and leeks are not an adventurous or out-of-the-way choice but the kind of dinner that French or Italian people might eat at home. If North Americans generally prefer pep- peroni to fresh corn on pizza, why should we expect our children to want anything different? Roisin Cossar Winnipeg, Manitoba